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VALUE OF EXPORTS

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However, any organization of farmers, along economic lines, with a policy of "savings, not profits," or "stabilizing of profits," would not collide with the self interests of the majority.

Capital Invested.-Mention has already been made of the capital invested in agriculture and manufacturing, but not of the difficulty of interpreting the word capital as applied to agriculture. The census figures for 1910 show total farm property, for instance, of forty billion dollars. But of this forty, twenty-eight is land value. And of this twenty-eight billions, fifteen billions is increase in land values since 1900, and represents no additional investment of capital. In 1910 some twelve billions of dollars represented the value of farm buildings, implements and machinery, and domestic animals, poultry, and bees. While land value increased in ten years 118 per cent, these buildings, implements, animals, etc., increased in value but 71 per cent (Fig. 2).

In manufacturing, however, in 1910, there was a capital investment of eighteen billion dollars-an increase over 1900 of 105 per cent. In banking in 1910 (in commercial banks only), there was invested capital to the amount of three billion dollars -a gain in ten years of 114 per cent. In transportation in 1910 (counting steam railroads alone) the capitalization was seventeen billion dollars, an increase in ten years of 42 per cent.

Value of Product.-We cannot of course compare the value of the products of all the great industries since these values are not a matter of record except in the cases of agriculture and manufacturing. Here, however, since 1870, the value of the product of manufacturing has been more than twice the value of the product of agriculture. According to the classification of the 1910 census, the values stood as follows: agriculture, eight billion dollars; manufacturing, twenty billions (Fig. 3). A study of the census figures shows that America, like some European countries, is now primarily a manufacturing country.

Value of Exports. In time past our chief exports were foodstuffs. This has now changed. Thus in 1880 exports of foodstuffs were four times the amount of manufactures exported. In 1912, however, exports of manufactures were two and a half times as large as exports of foodstuffs. In other words, exports of foodstuffs remained at about four hundred million of dollars, while exports of manufactures grew from a hundred and twenty millions to over a billion dollars.

However, agriculture has many exportable products which are not foodstuffs, chiefly cotton (Fig. 4). Yet even counting

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FIG. 3.-Agricultural progress, 1870-1910, showing increases by per cent.

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the total products of agriculture, over half of our exports are now of other products than those of agriculture. In 1913, for instance, our exports amounted to a total of $2,465,884,150; of this amount

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FIG. 4.-Cotton production and farm value of cotton.

the products of agriculture represent but $1,123,651,985, or 45 per cent. Whereas agricultural exports remain about the same from year to year, or increase very slightly, the imports of agri

Farm Value in Hundred Millions of Dollars.

cultural products show a steady and rapid growth. Considering both our imports and exports of agricultural products we find that our net exports are only about $300,000,000 a year. The big agricultural exports are, of course, cotton, packing-house products, grain (especially wheat and flour) and tobacco. The big agricultural imports are coffee, leather and hides, sugar, rubber, and silk.

Agricultural Land of the United States.-The United States has in its vast land area of two billion acres enough land to provide each man, woman and child of the population a twenty-acre tract. Of course, a large share of this land is not tillable. Much now is and must ever remain desert or mountain. At the 1910 census, only eight hundred million acres was "land in farms," and only half of this was "improved." By improved land is meant all land regularly tilled, or mowed, land pastured and cropped in rotation, land lying fallow, land in gardens, orchards, vineyards, and nurseries, and land occupied by farm buildings. The unimproved land in farms is, as indicated above, some four hundred million acres. In other words, our thirty million farming population on six million farms is actually utilizing but one-fourth of our land area. The average acreage of the "farm" in 1910 was one hundred and thirty-eight acres; of the "improved land" in the farm, seventy-five acres. In 1900 the average of improved land per farm was seventy-two acres, which indicates a slight tendency to increase the amount of land farmed by one farmer.

Exploitation and Conservation.-The economic history of the twentieth century in the United States begins with the birth of the doctrine of conservation-conservation of our soils, our waters, our rivers and our forests. This beginning marks a reaction against the nineteenth century of wanton and feverish exploitation of these same resources. The "soil-robbery" carried on by isolated and competing individuals, and known as farming during these hundred years, left a legacy of soil exhaustion problems for future generations to solve.

Better Business for Farmers. Sir Horace Plunkett declared the rural life problems in the United States to be better farming, better business, better living. The report of the Roosevelt Country Life Commission found that from the commercial standpoint farming is not profitable enough, considering the labor, energy and risks involved, and the social and sanitary conditions of the open country.

The unattached man on the farm stands alone against the better mobilized interests of manufacturing and commerce. As a pro

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